Token Sales on an Unprecedented Rise

No matter how you look at it, whether Ether / Dollars raised or number of monthly projects, it is clear that token sales are proliferating. These sales have been on a constant rise, each month setting a new record. This has been laid out in black and white courtesy of data from Elementus, a company known to derive its records and information from blockchain records as opposed to ICO self reports. Elementus says that there has been a constant rise in crowdsales, thanks to a visualization that it has created, showing the slow and humble beginnings for ICOs back in 2014, compared with the explosion in mid 2017.

Three Crowdsales at the Top

The visualization depicts three particular crowdsales that stand out above the rest in the sense that each is controversial in its own right. To put it mildly, the Petro is a contentious project since it is not easy to verify with any certainty its reported $5 billion, especially bearing in mind how investors are reluctant to offer public comments on their involvement, and the fact that there is hardly any information regarding the provided accounts. The crowdsale at Telegram happened even without the crowds, going specifically to private investors instead, while “Ethereum killer” EOS’ $2.5 billion ICO managed to get over 5 million in ETH, which represented 5% of the whole supply.

Up Is the Only Way for Monthly Sales

According to records at Elementus in terms of the number of token sales, there has been an increase of about $100k and this, they say has grown substantially every month bar December. March saw 174 tokens executed which basically work out as an average of six daily. This is just two more than January’s 172.

Interesting Graphs

Graphs have always been used to depict how these sales are fairing and so far, one of the most interesting is one depicting the rise of SAFTs (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) and security tokens. Just a year ago, nothing much was known about Reg D tokens but they suddenly shot up from 6 in November all the way to 23 in December and a whopping 36 in March. Reg D makes it possible for crowdsales to raise funds from investors who have been accredited and do not have any limit on the amount that can be raised. One of the disadvantages, however, has to be the fact that these fundraisers are not technically crowdsales, since the public cannot take part.

It is expected that Reg A+ token sales will be the next big thing this year and next. These will come about in form of a mini IPO and make it possible for projects to raise up to $50 million in a single year. As such, there have been several applications made to the SEC for the accreditation of Reg A+ but the floodgates are yet to open due to the time taken for a placement memorandum to be analyzed before approval.